FARMING IN VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 336, 23 January 1889, Page 3

FARMING IN VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND.

The 1 British Consul at Baltimore, in a recent report on the agriculture of Virginia and Maryland, gives a very sombre picture of the position of the farmer there. He is in many respects worse off than the British farmer. If the latter is hampered with rent, rates, and land-tax, he is compensated \ "with comparatively cheap labour, and his land yields him a return at least four-fold that of the American farmer. The latter j lacks much that makes existence enjoyable ; ; he is without other society, the high price ; of labour forces him to be his own servant, | and to employ hi 3 children at farm labour ■when they should be at school. No one •who has not gone over a farm in the States in question can realise how really dirty the land is, not with the unobtrusive weeds which are the despair of the English farmer, but .tall, hardy, tough plants, almost arriving at the dignity of bushes, overshadow the'fields of grain and ruin the pastures. To inquiries on this subject, the farmer answers that labour is dear and the and is his owd. He has his own grievance also on the small profit to be got out of farming, and the terrible competition and consequent low price of produce. For some reason, known only to himself, he dreads above all things the abrogation of the land tax in England, which he professes to consider inevitable, and which he declares would prove the death-knell of the American farmer. He does not understand why free-trade England shoud thus tax her own produce -while admitting that of the foreigner free. The price of land in Maryland and Virginia has fallen greatly in price of late years In Eastern Virginia the farmer holding 1,000 acres is a poor man, and probably could not get more than £2 to £3an acre if he tried to sell it. The commercial fertilisers are expensive, and the crops are sometimes in consequence very small. The average wheat crop for the two State is only about 6£ bushels an acre, and it is therefore not surprising that the area under wheat diminishes yearly, for although high- farming and lavish fertilising will produce a greater yield the price of wheat is falling. Mr Segrave describes dairy management in Maryland and Virginia, in spite of the increased attention given to it of late, as "in a deplorably bad condition," a large proportion of the butter sent to market being almost unfit for human consumption. Oleomargarine is in many cases preferred "to the often dirby, tallowy, rancid butter of tbe country." This is the more remarkable because when a dairy has once established a reputation for good butter it can demand almost any price it likes. It is said tha/fc there are dairymen in tiew York and New Jersey who can always get a dollar (4s 2d) a lb. for their butter. It is almost impossible to get really fresh butter in Baltimore. Tobacco is not proving a paying crop, and it is doubtful whether •cotton pays. Both are most exacting crops, requiring all the farmer's attention ; cotton .also engenders improvidence in consequence ■of the prevailing practice of taking advances on the growing crops, which devour the proceeds of the labour and industry of •the planter. The better class of agriculturists are convinced that their future lies In pastoral farming, the rearing of sheep, and cattle, and the growing of fruib and vegetables.